


Run Til You Lose The World (And Get It Back)

by Elkian (SuperImposed)



Series: INFOBAR Lore [3]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Alternate Alt Mode, Alternate Universe, Cell Phone!Orion Pax, Gen, Heavily Alternate Universe, INFOBAR Optimus Prime, INFOBARverse, Ratchet and Ironhide cameo, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 02:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16610195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperImposed/pseuds/Elkian
Summary: Wartime Iacon is a hellscape. Orion Pax just wanted to get himself, and his friends, and anyone else he could find, out alive. He didn't ask for this, but he sure as Pit isn't going to let go.





	Run Til You Lose The World (And Get It Back)

He doesn’t remember much.

Running, that he remembers. A lot of running. Ratchet and Ironhide’s legs around him; screams; the  _ thud-thud-thud _ of the bombs falling in the distance.

The crack in the ground, just large enough to swallow him whole. 

(hole. heheheh.)

 

He 

fell

for

what

seemed

like

d

a

y

s

.

 

He didn’t recall landing.

He did recall the feeling of being held - not like a user or a friend, but like the world itself was cradling him. And a voice.

 

_ “What are you?” _

 

The voice wasn’t something his comm suite detected - it reverberated through his entire being, strangely soothing and overwhelming in its potency.

He recalled defaulting to his standard response mode: snark. He folded his arms and tried to look at where he thought the voice sourced - the darkness seemed to go on forever. “Wow, you don’t even ask my name before judging my alt mode? In-fragging-credible.”

 

_“I know you, Orion Pax, my Son."_

 

He had the sudden and disorienting feeling of having been flung into deep space.

“Who-”

 

_ “What are you?” _

 

“I don’t...”

 

Something like a face loomed up in front of him, an incomprehensible mien that his optics could not possibly decipher. Something like a hand rose to point - a hand that was smaller than an atom and larger than the galaxy in one, pointing at what he  _ knew _ must be the very center and core of his very spark.

 

_ “What is Orion Pax?” _

 

“I-” he shook himself, utterly unbalanced, staring into the depths - or were his optics even active? “I’m- a mobile communications transceiver. A commformer.”

 

_ “And what are you, Orion Pax?” _

 

Feeling both like he had an inkling of what the question  _ meant _ and more confused than before, he tentatively continued. “I’m- a medical assistant. Former- ha, former  _ everything _ , seems like. I tried my hand at call centers, data collection, archiving, psychology, even mining - but it seems like nothing I ever did was good enough for them,” and he didn’t mean to say those, the words pulled straight from his spark along with the grief and self-pity that he’d buried with them.

 

The presence cradled him, the vagueness forming into a sensation of awe-inspiring hands curving around his body.

 

The face, if it was a face, the face seemed to be looking upon him kindly, with an understanding that hurt to comprehend.

 

_ “I know you, Orion Pax, my Son. I know you as I know all my Children. You are… hurting, grieving, lashing out, reaching out. You are kind and you are sharp. You criticize and you heal. And you, more than anything, wish well for the rest of your Siblings. Your love and your compassion for them has not gone unnoticed.” _

 

Later, he has no idea how he tried to argue. “I’m not,” his voice - if it even was his voice, if he was even speaking and seeing and  _ awake _ , a possibility that seemed more doubtful by the moment - his voice was tremulously weak, “I’m- I’m selfish, and I always snap at people, and I can’t let it slide when people make fun of me, and I…. I…..”

 

_ “You do not suffer injustice quietly. Not of yourself, and not of your Siblings. You protect those who have hurt you, and you reprimand those you love. You tell them what they wish to hear and you tell them what they need to hear.” _

 

Gimlet galaxies optics lit, indisputably, and they lit on him. No gaze had ever,  _ could _ ever have been so intense, nor so absolutely loving.

 

_ “Too many of my Chosen are too much one or the other. Too kind to correct, or too adamant to relent. I beseech you, Orion Pax, my Son, to be what my Children need.” _

 

“We need there not to be a war!” he’d snapped before he’d even realized it, and the presence  _ sighed _ , sounding more tired than anything, ever, had a right to.

 

_ “I know this, and thus I Choose you. My Fires grew too cold. My joints have frozen in solitude. My isolation binds me. To free Myself would be to end your World. Orion Pax, my Son, I Choose you, and I beseech you: end this war.” _

 

“How?” he’d whispered, overcome by the sheer  _ magnitude _ of the requirement, of everything together. He’d fallen to his knees, or would have, if his body could move. He couldn’t be sure he HAD a body.

 

_ “Accept my Call and take up your Mantle.” _

 

“Okay,” a whisper so soft even he could barely hear it, “okay.”

 

_ “Rise, Optimus Prime. You have been Chosen.” _

 

His world dissolved into light.

 

\---

 

Later, Ratchet and Ironhide would tell him that’s how they found him - the brilliant light bursting out of the crack in the ground, a crack they barely needed to reach into yet continued into the very core of the planet.

 

Jolting to nearly ten times his height and forty times his mass in a matter of an astrosecond would have been mindwrenchingly painful, had the Matrix not numbed the pain of it. Optimus often jokes that his friends would never believe who he was if they hadn’t watched the change in action, to which both would argue that  _ of course they would _ , because nobody was as much of a hothelmed, compassionate, trolling  _ idiot _ as their beloved Prime and Leader.

 

Whether with the Matrix around his spark or his friends around the galaxy, Optimus Prime always knows this: he is loved.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Oh man, the Lost Light finale really makes me want to write TF again!  
> Me: Oh hey, I mocked up a bunch of stuff for INFOBARverse and didn't post it, let's see if there's anything good in he-  
> Me: ....oh yeah, I gave Orion Pax a psychology degree, didn't I?
> 
> \---
> 
> HMU with your thoughts! I might get around to actually posting how OP got that degree, a bit, but I'm a little worried about it because it includes Arielle and I don't know much about her personality in canon series yet.
> 
> \---  
> I could have gone with a phone-y title here but titles are my weakness and this one sounds cool. Might change it later.


End file.
